2007 Shivvers Memorial Lecture: A Conversation with Wendell Berry
Date: Sunday, April 15th, 2007 
Start: 7:00 pm
Location: Ames, Iowa
Poet, essayist, farmer, and novelist Wendell Berry is joined by daughter Mary Berry Smith and Iowa farmers Francis Thicke of Fairfield and Laura Krouse of Mt. Vernon. Long-time sustainable agriculture proponent Laura Jackson, who teaches biology at the University of Northern Iowa, served as moderator.
Wendell Berry, who has taught English at New York University and at the University of Kentucky, lives on a farm just five miles from his birthplace in northern Kentucky. He is celebrated not only as a writer but as a philosopher, ethicist, and conservationist. Mary Berry Smith lives in north-central Kentucky, not far from her father, on a traditional cattle and tobacco farm. She has diversified her operation to include grape growing and wine-making in the
centuries-old tradition of family farms in Europe.
More than 800 people came to hear this discussion on the changing landscape of American agriculture, local economics and rural life.
This lecture commemorated the 20th anniversary of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. The Shivvers Memorial Lecture Series is held in honor of John Shivvers, who farmed near Knoxville, Iowa. Other sponsors included the Gamma Sigma Delta Honorary Society for Agriculture and the ISU Committee on Lectures (funded by GSB).
Top photo: Members of the panel from right to left: Francis Thicke, Mary Berry Smith, Wendell Berry and Laura Krouse.
Bottom photo: Wendell Berry answers a question from the crowd.
Related information
Listen to podcast [MP3]
Read article in Summer 2007 Leopold Letter
Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture |
Ames, Iowa 50011 |
(515) 294-3711 |
leocenter@iastate.edu